


Aubergine Emoji

by dirigibleplumbing



Category: Boyfriend Material - Alexis Hall
Genre: Bugs & Insects, Cooking, Established Relationship, Fluff, Food, M/M, Pasta, Recipes, Texting, The James Royce-Royces, Vegetarians & Vegans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:07:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28125861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleplumbing/pseuds/dirigibleplumbing
Summary: Luc plans and cooks an impressive-looking vegetarian meal for Oliver.Featuring: help from the WhatsApp group; several brief discussions of curry; a recipe for handmade fettuccine; a new bug-themed fundraising event; and Luc and Oliver enjoying their meal together.
Relationships: Oliver Blackwood/Luc O'Donnell
Comments: 51
Kudos: 118
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	1. Aubergine Emoji

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oxymoronbby](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronbby/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, oxymoronbby! I hope you like what I came up with for these two.
> 
> Now with a cover!

**_Help,_** I typed into the WhatsApp (currently titled Assorted Fruits). **_What’s a vegetarian meal that looks and sounds really impressive but can actually be made with minimal effort and zero special equipment by a mediocre cook?_** **_Meaning, me. I’m the mediocre cook._**

The chat was immediately renamed Aubergine Emoji. 

_OMG!!!!_ That was Bridge, of course. _ARE YOU COOKIGN FOR OLIVER??? THAT’S SO CUTE!!_

James Royce-Royce had a more practical approach: _Is this for a special occasion? Birthday? Anniversary?_

 _Apology?_ suggested Priya.

 **_Okay, one: anniversary? Are you serious? You know how long we’ve been dating. Two: How dare you, Priya. Three: it’s more of an “I love you and I was thinking about you” thing._** That was close enough to the truth, at least. They’d find out about the rest after I talked to Oliver about it. 

Bridget sent so many heart-eyes emojis that for several seconds my app just scrolled through line-after-ever-so-slightly-off-center line. 

James Royce-Royce said, _Thanks for keeping the discourse at such a high level, Bridge._

Priya: _Your answer is obvious: vegetable curry. Google a couple of Oliver’s favorite vegetables + curry, ignore every recipe that calls for curry powder or is written by someone named Gemma or Kate, pick a recipe that looks pretty, then go to Taj and pick up anything you don’t already have. Cooking with whole spices instead of pre-ground ones is guaranteed to get you laid. I can vouch for this._

The chat was renamed Curry On Home. 

I tried to come up with a way of saying “Sorry to immediately shoot down your thoughtful and thoroughly vetted suggestion, Priya, but due to a past trauma involving my mother’s cooking, I’m going to have to reject the entirety of the large and diverse cuisine of not only Bangladesh but all of South Asia” that didn’t make me sound like an insensitive arse and came up blank. So I typed: **_Sorry to immediately shoot down your thoughtful and thoroughly vetted suggestion, Priya, but due to a past trauma involving my mother’s cooking, I’m going to have to reject the entirety of the large and diverse cuisine of not only Bangladesh but all of South Asia._ **

_Also,_ James Royce-Royce cut in, _I’m not sure Luc’s palate or cooking skills are advanced enough to handle combining and coordinating such complex flavours, especially since it’s not what he’s used to making_. 

Taking this mildly insulting—though true—statement for the save it was, I typed: **_Given how my mother’s curries turn out, this is definitely true._ **

The last time Oliver and I had visited Mum, her special curry had included tinned pineapple. She’d read that tinned jackfruit made a great meat substitute, but couldn’t find any, and substituted pineapple instead, figuring it would be the same. Having actually eaten jackfruit—and even enjoyed it, thanks, Bronwyn—I could attest that they were, in no way whatsoever, the same. 

_Okay. Here’s something about cooking vegetarian._ James Royce-Royce was, thankfully, taking charge of the conversation. _Most omnivores approach vegetarian food as if it’s food that’s missing something. They’ll make a meat-centric meal they like, except the meat isn’t there, and then whinge that it’s boring and not filling. Or they’ll use a meat substitute and cook it like it’s meat, which, the point is that it_ isn’t _meat, so this doesn’t work. You have to go into this believing that things without meat can be fabulous, or what you cook won’t be fabulous._

 **_Got it,_ ** I replied. **_Vegetarian food is fabulous._ ** To be honest, I _did_ think that vegetarian food was missing something—that is, until I dated Oliver, and started taking him to vegan pop-ups, and hipster plant-based Asian fusion restaurants, and eating his cooking. Now I really—like, _really_ really—thought it was fabulous. If you did it properly. I wasn’t yet convinced that was something I was capable of doing. 

The “typing…” status under James Royce-Royce’s appeared and stubbornly stayed there. I leant against the wall, one of the safer positions for me to take in my low-ceilinged kitchen, and waited for him to finish. 

Priya was less patient. _Salt and butter help, too. And carbs. Can’t go wrong with salt, fat, and carbs._

_FANCY SANDWICHES?!_

_We can do better than that,_ began James Royce-Royce’s text. _And we will. Luc, if you’re cooking to impress, you need to have a variety of coordinated flavours, textures, and colors. Incorporate all the flavors if you can. That’s sweet, sour, bitter, salty and savory. Have at least three textures. And at least one food that isn’t beige or brown. Fortunately, I’m here to ensure you’re not missing anything._

**_Thank god I have you, then._ ** I wasn’t entirely sarcastic. Or not entirely sincere. 

_You’re serving hand-made fettuccine with béchamel cheese sauce, pesto, and herb-tossed carrot and courgette garnished with quick-pickled diced red pepper._

The chat was renamed back to Aubergine Emoji. 

**_Again,_ ** I typed, **_the idea is that_ ** **I’m** **_the one who’ll be making this._ **

_I did read your message, Luc._

**_Yeah making pasta from scratch sounds… way harder than a curry. You know I don’t have a pasta machine, right? Regular people don’t have those._ **

_Don’t worry darling, I have a plan_. 

**_That’s not entirely reassuring_** , I wrote. 

_WHAT ABT DESSERT?!_ Bridget interjected, cutting into our tête-à-tête. 

**_I have that handled, actually._ ** Dessert was, in fact, the one aspect of this meal I had anything like a handle on. I wondered if part of James Royce-Royce’s plan involved building my own pasta machine out of reworked aluminium cans and bits of clockwork. I’d have to cannibalize one of Oliver’s ridiculous fob-watches to get everything, and then Oliver would wonder where his favorite watch went, and then he’d look at me with those big storm-cloud eyes all full of disappointment, and then we’d break up and I’d be alone forever. 

_Making pasta isn’t that bad,_ the other James Royce-Royce said, making me wonder the last time he’d sent anything in the chat that was anything other than a one-syllable word. _James taught me. I made tortellini._

There was silence on the groupchat as we contemplated the image of James Royce-Royce delicately forming little crescents of plump, cheese-stuffed pasta with his giant’s hands and sausage fingers. 

_See?_ James Royce-Royce said at last. 

_G2G!_ Bridget said. _WE GOT A BUNCH OF BOGUS DMCA TAKEDOWN NOTICES BCOS SOME1 IN AMERICA’S TRIED TO COPYRIGHT TEH CONCEPT OF DESERT PLANETS AND THEIR LAWYER DOESN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT PLAGIARISM MEANS. TONNES OF OUR TITLES ARE DISAPPEARING FROM AMAZON!!!_

**_Amazon has unethical business practices._ **

_I KNOW!!!! BUT IT’S WHERE PEOPLE BUY BOOKS SO WE HAVE TO SELL TEHM THERE AHHHHH NOW THEY’RE SAYING NO ONE ELSE CAN TITLE BOOKS WITH THE WORD ‘DESERT’ THIS IS GOING TO TAKE 4EVER AND APPARENTLY THEY EMAILED US ABT THIS EALRIER THREATENING LEGAL ACTION AND NO 1 GOT BACK TO THEM?? I’M SO GOING TO GET FIRED_

**_You’re not going to get fired. Have fun with the American legal system._ **

_If anyone’s getting fired over this bullshit, it’s whoever’s suing you,_ Priya said. 

_LUV U ALL GOO DLUCK WITH THE PASTA LUC G2G_

**_Thanks, I’ll need it._ **

_You’ll get the hang of it in no time, Luc,_ James Royce-Royce assured me. _Do you have a rolling pin?_

**_Yes?_ **

_A cheese grater?_

**_I have one of those box wotsits, not one of those fiddly microplane ones._ **

_And your oven works?_

**_I made frozen pizza in it this very morning._ **

It had been covered with shiitake mushrooms, sweet onions, roasted peppers, and most importantly, cheese. I’d bought it thinking Oliver and I could share it, then was too embarrassed to serve Oliver convenience food, no matter how organic and manufactured in Oregon it was, and ate the whole thing for breakfast while I fruitlessly searched Pinterest for “impressive but easy vegetarian food.” 

_Brilliant. I’m sending you the details, and some videos that should help._

Fifteen minutes later, I had a five-page email in my inbox of detailed instructions and links not only to videos, but recipe blogs, each accompanied by commentary from James Royce-Royce on what the person in the video or writing the recipe did wrong or which right things they did that I needed to pay very, very close attention to. 

Homework. Yay. 

Okay, this was a lot, but James Royce-Royce was being this thorough so that I had less space to cock everything up. It would take awhile, and I’d probably have to practice some of it ahead of time, but it shouldn’t really require talent or finesse or intimate knowledge of the molecular makeup of gluten. I could totally do this, and if I did, Oliver would smile, and make that face he makes when he’s surprised and delighted that food tastes good—and then he’d say yes.


	2. Recipes

####  _Handmade Fettuccini_

I don’t know why you’d want to do it my way when you could do it James Royce-Royce’s way, but hey, this worked, and it was even kinda fun sometimes? James Royce-Royce forgot that in normal people’s flats, the worktops are cheap lino and not 30-centimetre-high solid wood worktables, but I think I did okay using a regular cutting board. 

Okay, I realize it’s obnoxious not to list measurements for anything—believe me, I thought the same thing—but having now tried this recipe four times, with only the last couple of them deserving of being labeled a success, you really do have to figure this out by feel. 

**Ingredients:**

Plain flour 

Two or three eggs (If you don’t have a hyper-ethical vegetarian boyfriend, you might not know that there is a lot to be uncomfortable about, ethically speaking, regarding the production of eggs. Buy eggs from farms as close to where you live as you possibly can, keep in mind that most of the terms used to describe the living conditions of the chickens are made up and unregulated, and whatever you do, don’t look up “debeaking.” And if you do, don’t use Google, they have unethical business practices.) 

Olive oil 

A pinch of salt 

**Making the pasta, part one: beating**

Make a mound of flour on your wooden workspace, then dig out a handful of the top bit so there’s a little dip in the middle. Crack the eggs into the well, add a little olive oil and the salt, then grab a fork and start beating the eggs into the flour. Start out mostly just beating the eggs, mixing in a bit of flour at a time. Hit your head on the low ceiling of your flat. Wonder what you’re doing with your life, and if handmade pasta even looks or tastes any different than the kind you can buy in a box, then beat some more. 

**Making the pasta, part two: folding**

Eventually it’ll get so sticky that your fork is useless. This is where a bench scraper would come in handy—another thing not found in most people’s flats—but I used a metal spatula and it all worked out. I did try to use my hands, and I mean, you _could,_ if you don’t care about getting really sticky and having flour sludge stuck under your fingernails for days after. 

Utterly counterintuitive cooking hack from James Royce-Royce: the best way to remove sticky floury gunk from your skin is with more flour. Seriously, this works. It’s probably to do with gluten strands. 

Anyway, you take your bench scraper or your spatula and start folding everything towards the centre. After awhile the dough will get this texture that James Royce-Royce described as “shaggy,” which I guess is accurate but gave me a visceral sense-memory of taking a bite of curry containing not only black olives but also a clump of Michael of Kent’s fur—the Michael of Kent in question being, of course, Judy’s spaniel—so I’m going to describe the consistency as “feathery.” 

**Making the pasta, part three: kneading**

Once your dough is feathery, you start kneading. And then you keep kneading. Your phone will go off with texts alerts—these messages could be from your gorgeous, brilliant, boyfriend who may well need your comfort and support at that precise moment, your friends who want what’s best for you but also what would be most thrilling for them to observe from inside a parked car with their noses pressed into the windows, your misanthropic boss with no concept of the work/home life divide, or lovable upper-class twit coworker, who once apologized for the smell of his takeaway lunch during a videoconference in which the participants were in separate buildings—and you won’t be able to check which it is because your hands are covered in sticky floury gunk and James Royce-Royce hasn’t told you his flour trick yet. 

Back to the dough. When we left off, we were kneading. Now, you knead some more. Keep kneading. No, more than that. Seriously, this takes at least 10 minutes. You’ll know you're done when: your legs will be tired and reminding you how you don’t work out, ever; the dough is finally not sticky at all and is somewhere close to the consistency of modeling clay; and the whole thing is smooth and stretchy and weirdly reminiscent of human skin. 

**Making the pasta, part four: tea break**

Wrap the dough in clingfilm and let it sit for at least half an hour. Now is the time to check your phone and discover that the text from earlier is actually from a robo-dialer about your vehicle’s insurance. A smart person might start washing and slicing the ingredients for the rest of the meal. (I started watching videos of an enthusiastic American man going out into the wilderness and getting stung and bitten by various animals and insects, and only realised after I’d got halfway through “Bee Beard GONE WRONG” that it had been over an hour since I left my dough.) 

**Making the pasta, part five: roll, roll, roll**

Unwrap your dough, find your rolling pin, and sprinkle more flour everywhere, including your hands and the rolling pin and the cutting board, and probably the whole worktop and the floor and the sink and ceiling while you’re at it, though that’s not actually part of the recipe. 

Cut the dough into manageable sizes. Halves if you used two eggs, maybe quarters if you used more. This is another one of those things you learn by feel. 

Now it’s time to become a human pasta machine. Take one of the pieces and roll it out with your rolling pin.

Fold the dough into thirds, turn it 90 degrees, roll it out again, and then fold it again. Do this 3 times total and then roll the whole thing out as big and thin and rectangular as you possibly can. I’m told that one of those tapered French rolling pins helps with that, but I wouldn’t know. You know your dough is thin enough when it’s actually translucent. You know you messed up when one of the translucent bits actually becomes transparent, as in, a giant hole has just formed in your dough and you need to start folding and rolling again, if not starting over from scratch. 

**Making the pasta, part six: slicing**

Once you have your even-ish rectangle-ish slab of translucent-but-not-transparent dough, take a knife and cut it into an actual rectangle. Flour the rectangle so it doesn't stick when you do this next part. 

Loosely coax/fold the big rectangle into a long skinny rectangle that’s as long as the long side of the rectangle and as wide as a mobile phone. You’re sort of rolling it, but not with a rolling pin, more like how you’d roll up a piece of paper. Then slice perpendicular to your fold to make neatly folded lengths of fettuccine. You want to kinda saw at the dough rather than slam the knife down, because slamming will make the pasta stick to itself. 

**Making the pasta, part seven: look upon what you have wrought (then cover it in clingfilm again)**

Unfold all of the pieces to make sure they aren’t stuck together. I watched several James-Royce-Royce-recommended videos of people doing this, and one of them stacked their unfurled noodles like a big asterisk, so that they had a lot of space between them and didn’t get stuck together, so I did that too. 

Scoop up the noodles and toss them with more flour to really, really make sure they don’t stick together. They should all end up coated in an extra dusting of flour. 

James Royce-Royce said to hang the pasta to dry but I have no idea what that means—I’m picturing a rustic pasta clothesline with little pasta-sized pegs—but I read you can just cover them in clingfilm again so that’s what I did. 

**Cooking the pasta:**

Don’t do this until you are mere MINUTES away from serving. You want this pasta FRESH and HOT and FIRM. (Huh. This sounds like a good name for the WhatsApp.) 

Tip from James Royce-Royce: to keep the pasta from cooling too quickly after it’s served, heat up your plates. Run the tap over them, blot them so they’re damp but not dripping, then pop them in the microwave for 15 or so seconds. (This will vary a lot depending on your microwave and settings. If your plates are fancy hand-thrown ceramic ones, they will have metal bits in them so you can’t microwave them. Use the oven.) Dry them off completely. Enjoy your hot plates and hot pasta. 

Boil some water over the hob in a saucepan. Make sure there’s enough water to cover all the pasta. Throw in a dash of salt. 

Melt some butter in a saucepan. Keep that going hot enough to keep it melty but not burn it. 

Water boiling? Now you have less than two minutes to either perfect or ruin all your work! 

Put the pasta in the water and after NO MORE THAN 90 SECONDS, take it out of the water. Classy pasta is al dente pasta, but undercooked pasta is inedible. You’re allowed 10 seconds to fish some out of the pot and taste it to make sure it’s right. Then, if it is, get the pasta out of the water FAST and toss it in the melted butter. Use tongs or a slotted spoon to take the pasta out so you still have the pasta water for later. 

Once the pasta is covered in butter, serve it as immediately as you can. If it stays in the hot pan for too long it’ll keep cooking and get overdone. 

####  _Quick-Pickled Red Pepper Garnish_

**Ingredients:**

1 medium-sized red sweet pepper, seeds removed, diced 

125ml white vinegar 

125ml water

A spoonful of sugar 

1 clove garlic, peeled and smashed with the flat of your knife 

1 bay leaf 

2.5ml mustard seeds 

A pinch of salt 

**Pickling, except they aren’t** **_properly_ ** **pickled:**

Put the diced sweet pepper and smashed garlic in a jar. 

Add all the other ingredients to a small saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. When the honey has dissolved and everything is mixed, take the pan off the heat and pour the mixture over the peppers. Stir it around a bit so all the peppers are covered and there aren’t any weird air pockets. If you need to, add extra water so the liquid covers the peppers. 

Let everything cool down, then screw the lid on the jar and put it in the icebox for at least 1 hour. 

The results should taste fresh and bright, just a smidge sweet, and have a satisfying, crispy crunch. 

####  _Béchamel & Cheese Sauce _

**Ingredients:**

150ml double cream (this number is precise because I just poured in half of the 300ml container of Tesco’s extra thick double cream) 

1/3 stick of butter, though you might need a bit more 

3-4 heaped spoonfuls of plain flour 

A block of parmesan, at least 200g. Make sure you have extra for a garnish later. Get actual Parmigiano-Reggiano. **Note:** If your boyfriend is vegetarian, you have to make sure that the cheese you’re buying is vegetarian, because wow, meat is in _everything_! You thought cheese was just made out of fermented milk, right? Wrong. There’s this thing called rennet, which is basically some special enzymes that help make milk into cheese, and you can get it from certain vegetables or special molds, OR you can get it by grinding up the deep-frozen stomachs of young calves! If your regular supermarket doesn’t have cheese with vegetarian rennet, check kosher and halal shops. 

A tiny bit of nutmeg. If you have a microplane or similar—which I don’t—get a whole nutmeg and grate that so it’s nice and fresh. This is more flavorful or something, and, according to Priya, guaranteed to get you laid. 

Pasta water (Y’know how I told you to save the pasta water when cooking the fettuccine? Remember how I also said to only cook the pasta at the last possible moment? So yeah, if you’re doing this properly, you don’t have pasta water yet. _However,_ if you’re like me, you had to practice trying and failing at making the pasta several times to make sure it would work the final time, so, even though I dumped the pasta water after the first time, I cleverly remembered to keep it the second time.) 

Salt and pepper 

**Making the sauce:**

Grate the parmesan as small as you can. I used the smallest holes on my box grater, which I’d never used before, and which cut my hand in a million tiny papercuts. 

Melt the butter in a saucepan on low heat. Add the flour and whisk into a pale yellow paste. If it balls up, add a bit more butter. Then stir only occasionally, keeping a close eye on it, while it bubbles. What you’re doing here is evaporating the water from the butter and the flour, which, once it’s gone, will allow the heat to toast the flour. This keeps the sauce from tasting like flour. It’ll have a little bit of a nutty smell and the color will be more golden. It should still be a runny paste. 

Gently add the cream. The second it hits the pan, everything will abruptly solidify. Don’t be alarmed! (I was a little alarmed.) Just keep stirring. 

Add some pasta water to thin it out to the consistency you want, or maybe a bit thin, because you haven’t added the cheese yet. If you really don’t have pasta water, tap water is okay. It’ll be harder to get the texture right and the sauce will probably be a little grainy, though. 

Pour the cheese in and quickly stir it until it’s incorporated. Thin with more pasta water if you need to. Or if it needs to be richer, add more cream. Maybe milk, but that’ll make it sweeter, so use it sparingly. 

Add the nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste, stir to combine, and you’re done. 

####  _Pesto Sauce_

**Ingredients:**

Basil, about 80g (save 6-8 leaves for the grilled veggies) 

Pine nuts, as many as you can afford 

Grated parmesan, about 60g (see note in the Béchamel & Cheese Sauce ingredients)

Olive oil. I’m told that cold-pressed virgin is the best, and that you have to check that the only ingredient is olives, because yeah, some companies put in things that aren’t olives? 

1 garlic clove, peeled (2 if you’re daring, 4 if you developed your palate outside of the UK, and a whole head if you’re in Gilroy, California) 

Salt and pepper 

**Toasting the pine nuts:**

You can do this on the hob and it’s basically the same thing, except that it’s way easier to accidentally burn them, and pine nuts are expensive. Use an oven. 

Preheat the oven to 180ºC. This will take awhile and maybe in that time you could’ve done this on the hob but look, you can do this ahead of time, even the day before, and pine nuts—well they do grow on trees, I guess, but not in Shepherd’s Bush. 

Spread the pine nuts out on a baking tray, preferably the kind with a little rim around it so the nuts can’t roll off. 

Bake for about 5 minutes. It might take a bit longer; if it does, give them a small stir so they get heated evenly. When they’re done they’ll smell fantastic and be faintly gold all over. 

Immediately pour them onto something cool, like a plate, but a wide one so they aren’t crowding each other and can cool properly, but also something with rims because they _will_ roll off. It’s like pine nuts don’t appreciate how expensive they are.

If you’re not using them right away, put them in a sealed container. I used an empty jam jar that Oliver had compulsively washed. 

**Making the pesto:**

You’re supposed to have a food processor for this, or one of those high-speed blenders raw foodists won’t shut up about. I have a regular blender with one setting. I use it to make blended drinks containing both large quantities of alcohol and enough juice, margarita mix, or fruit to mask the taste of alcohol. If your blender can blend ice, it can make pesto. It won’t be as perfectly smooth as if you used a food processor, but let’s face it, the homemade pasta is gonna come out pretty “rustic” anyway, so let’s just lean into that. 

Put the basil, pine nuts, garlic, and some of the cheese and olive oil in the blender and start blending. Everyone has a different idea of what texture pesto should be, if it should be runny or pasty, and what kind of cheese to basil ratios are appropriate, and everyone has a different amount of pine nuts they can afford. So basically, stop and taste it a lot, add more olive oil when you need it, and more cheese if you need it. Blend it until it’s as smooth as your blender can possibly blend. Resist the urge to eat all of your pesto out of the blender with a spoon. If you add too much olive oil, buy more basil. If you add way, way too much olive oil, buy some more basil and toast some more pine nuts, or your sauce will be rubbish. The pesto should taste like sunlight and basil and the magic of toasted pine nuts—not olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste. 

####  _Herb-tossed Grilled Squash_

**Ingredients:**

One medium-sized courgette

One medium-sized yellow summer squash 

Two carrots, greens on, fancy colors if you can get them 

1 bunch fresh oregano 

6-8 leaves fresh basil 

4 sprigs rosemary (don’t buy it, find someone you know who grows it, they will be thrilled for you to take it off their hands) 

60ml olive oil 

(The recipe James Royce-Royce sent me was written by someone in Petaluma, California, and called for a 1/2 teaspoon of red pepper flakes. I omitted it because I’m not insane.) 

1 clove garlic (the recipe called for 5?! California, are you okay? Blink twice if you need a big glass of almond milk to keep your mouth from catching on fire.) 

Salt and pepper

**Preparing the vegetables:**

Preheat the oven to 200ºC.

Cut off the ends of the courgette and squash. Slice in half long-ways. Put the halves flat-side down on the cutting board and cut into spears approximately the same width as your fettuccine. Thicker than that is fine and, in my case, inevitable. 

Peel the carrots. Trim down the greens until just 4-5cm stick out the top. Cut them in half long-ways. No more slicing for the carrots! 

**Cooking the vegetables and preparing the herb oil:**

Spread all the vegetables on a baking tray and bake for about 20 minutes. 

While you’re waiting, start working on the herbs. 

Wash and thoroughly dry all the greens. 

Slice the garlic thin. Not minced or chopped, sliced. (James Royce-Royce sent me diagrams.) 

Chop the oregano and basil finely. 

DON’T slice the rosemary! Keep those leaves on those twigs. 

Heat the olive oil in a small pan, being careful to keep the heat low so it doesn’t smoke. Toss in the rosemary sprigs. If the oil is heated properly, it’ll start bubbling a little when you add them. When it stops bubbling, remove and discard the rosemary. Now you have fragrant rosemary-infused oil. Keep it on low heat, and seriously, be careful that it doesn’t start smoking. Be like a model parent in a 1990s anti-cigarette campaign and don’t let the oil smoke! 

Check on your veg—it’s probably been about 20 minutes now. Ideally they’ll have just barely started to turn brown around the edges. If they’ve browned properly, take them out of the oven. If not, turn on your grill and your oven light. DON’T LOOK AWAY, or not for very long, and don’t open the oven door until they’re one. When they’re perfectly browned, take them out of the oven and leave the door open so it starts to cool down. 

Add the garlic to the oil for 30 seconds, then add the other herbs, give them a stir, and after another 15-20 seconds take the pan off the heat and pour the oil into a big heat-safe bowl. 

Put the just-barely browned vegetables in the bowl with herb oil and toss everything together. Add salt and pepper to taste. 

Cover with aluminium foil and put back in the oven. If the oven is still super hot, leave the door slightly open. You’re just keeping the veg warm until they’re ready to be plated.


	3. Curry, CRAPP, and crickets

Most of my Saturday was consumed by buying ingredients, learning how to make fettuccine from scratch, and cooking dessert and quick-pickled sweet peppers—other than the half-hour I spent listening to my mum describe the eighth season of _Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives_ and recounting my day. I spent so much time on the food that I forgot to eat until it’d been dark for hours and the James Royce-Royces stopped by to bring me supplies. 

And by supplies, I don’t mean a French rolling pin, a pastry scraper, or a high-speed blender. I mean James Royce-Royce brought me two dinner plates. Two. Plates. 

He showed me how to get the flour off though, and then insisted I eat properly and dragged me and James Royce-Royce to Dishoom where we ate, ironically enough, curries. Amongst other things. I had the chicken ruby. (Look, I spent all day thinking about vegetables and the ethics of chicken eggs and learning about how cow stomachs are used to make my cheese. I ordered the goddamned chicken.) 

After we’d eaten our fill of bhel puri, paneer rolls, spicy lambchops, mattar paneer, naan, and chicken ruby, and drunk our fill of Kingfisher—except James Royce-Royce, who had a glass of Castilian syrah—the James Royce-Royces walked me home. I spent the rest of my evening in my dressing gown, texting Oliver and—oh god how did this happen to me—researching an event for work. No one had asked me to, but the research was, dare I say it, _fun_. 

How to make this sound fun? Well, first off: some countries intentionally introduce non-native dung beetles. Seriously. (This is not the fun part.) Apparently dung beetles save the United States an estimated 380 million dollars a year just by taking livestock feces and burying them underground, because otherwise it would attract flies and other less helpful creepy-crawlies. 

So New Zealand wanted to get in on this dung beetle train. But this professor at the University of Auckland said that there hadn’t been enough research, not enough farmers had been consulted, and the whole enterprise could be disastrous for New Zealand’s biosecurity. He said that dung beetles could spread E. coli to both humans and livestock and could be doing it right now in all the other places where dung beetles have been introduced and no one would know because no one was checking for it. 

Dr. Fairclough was livid. She sent the Auckland professor a strongly worded email with numerous citations, and CCed the whole office. She called me in for a meeting, during which she expressed concern that CRAPP would lose donors due to the defamatory remarks of this professor. 

I did try to explain to her that the general populace—and certainly the demographic that donated to our meager dung beetle organization—did not generally read articles published by entomologists in New Zealand. Really, I did. Then I gave up and told her we should have a second, more casual fundraising event in addition to the Beetle Drive, something light and educational that might attract new donors and keep our existing ones engaged. This wasn’t the first time I’d suggested something like this, but it was the first time she agreed. She almost complimented me. 

Second: there’s this place in Emlyn Gardens that farms and harvests mealworms, crickets, and beetles, makes food out of them, and gives tours and cooking classes. They also sell whole dried edible crickets and mealworms. Yum. 

My pitch to co-host an educational event with them did not, at first, go over well with Dr. Fairclough. 

“I fail to see the relevance of _Orthoptera_ or pupal _Tenebrionidae_ to this organization,” she said. 

I knew better than to change her mind on this, and she was right, anyway. Instead I tried to explain that to most people, dung beetles, crickets, and mealworms all fall under the category of “gross bugs” and that at least the edible cricket people had a fun gimmick to get people interested. Eventually, between no one having a better idea and Alex’s misguided enthusiasm for the prospect, she was convinced to allow this event, though she declined to be present. 

This is how I ended up texting Oliver—flour still stuck under my fingernails—the question, **_Would you eat bugs?_ **

He replied quickly: _Statistically speaking, I cumulatively eat approximately 1kg of insects a year due to the inclusion of varying amounts of insects and insect parts that farms and corporations are allowed to include in fresh vegetables and processed foods._

Then, a moment later: _But I assume you mean to ask whether I, as a vegetarian, would eat a food item made entirely or primarily of insects. This is an interesting question both personally and ethically. On the one hand, such a food item would not, of course, be vegetarian, and, the thought of directly consuming an insect-based food, particularly one in which the insects are whole or otherwise visually present, is viscerally unpleasant to me. On the other, I, as noted above, already consume plenty of insects incidentally in my own diet, and cannot practically avoid doing so. Additionally, human insect consumption is one of the best, if not only, solutions to a looming crisis regarding global food security. They consume food and water at lower ratios than other meat as well as most beans and nuts, and are cheap, plentiful, and nutritious. Insects are a staple in many traditional cuisines, and my knee-jerk revulsion to the prospect is most likely a learned one._

This was almost immediately followed by: _Unless the question is a much more simple one about whether I would eat a dead fly or similar for the purposes of a bet, prank, or similar, in which case: no._

I fucking loved this man. **_I fucking love you,_ **I typed. 

He replied: _Likewise._ Then: _I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow evening._

I wrote: **_Likewise_ ** _._


	4. Plating the food

Anyway, the point is: the plates. 

James Royce-Royce’s pair of plates were bigger than normal dinner plates, and almost entirely flat, without the fluted lip thing plates usually have. They were also matte black and quite charming. 

**Equipment:**

This dinner was designed to be served on matte black plates. You’ll also want to have a big serving fork, two serving spoons, a pair of tongs, and a ladle. Don’t forget to microwave the plates. 

Firm, freshly cooked, made-from-scratch fettuccine, piping hot and coated in butter 

Béchamel and cheese sauce 

Pesto 

Herbed-tossed grilled summer squash (and carrot) 

Quick-pickled red bell peppers 

**Directions:**

Before you start the pasta, take the veg out of the oven. Grate the rest of your parmesan on top, but instead of using the tiniest holes, this time you want to use the biggest. Let the veg and cheese sit for a few minutes. 

Set the table for two, with a fork and a knife. Regret not putting out candles. Regret not _buying_ candles, or candleholders for that matter. Set out wine—I was advised to serve the meal with a Sauvignon Blanc—and wine glasses. 

Using a big serving spoon, drizzle the béchamel cheese sauce on one half of the plate in a thick, wavy line. Repeat with the pesto on the other half of the plate. Then repeat with the second plate. 

Cook the pasta. 

Twirl a small serving of pasta around the serving fork, using the ladle as a base so the pasta doesn’t slip off. Bring it over a plate, then carefully ease the ladle away and deposit the pasta in the centre of the plate as a low, wide nest. Repeat with the second plate. 

Using the tongs, or your bare hands if you’re feeling very dextrous and don’t care about singing your fingers on grilled veg, deposit the squash and carrot into the center of the nest, like the little hollow at the top is a shallow vase. Some will spill out. Lean into this. It’s rustic. It’s wabi sabi. It’s intentional. 

It was at this point that I lapsed into such a high state of anxiety that I barely knew what I was doing, what was happening, or what I was feeling. As far as headspaces for serving food go, I don’t recommend this one. 

Scatter the pickled red pepper over the plate. 

Repeat the veg and pepper procedure with the second plate. 

Ta-da! Serve to your brilliant boyfriend. Channel James Royce-Royce and properly introduce the food. Sit down and watch your dazzled boyfriend eat your impressive meal. 

He _is_ dazzled, right?


	5. If that’s agreeable

“This is dazzling, Lucien,” Oliver said. “I hardly know where to begin.” 

I looked down at my big borrowed plate. The food looked unfamiliar and strange—because I didn’t usually eat like this, and these weren’t my plates—and simultaneously like something I’d eaten every day all my life—because I’d spent the last week planning it and the last two days thinking and doing little other than prepare it. 

“Like this,” I said, hoping I was right, and twirled my fork through the pasta, speared some cheese and veg on the end of it, sliced out a bite-sized piece, and dipped it in one sauce and then the other. 

I looked up to see that Oliver had done the same and was already chewing his. Hastily, I did the same. Okay, moment of truth. 

The food was still hot. The fettuccine wasn’t all that different than if I’d made it from the dried boxed kind, but it was cooked properly. Altogether, the food didn’t taste like it was missing something. I tried to count the flavors. Salty and savory, yes, a little sourness, a hint of sweetness… what was the last one? 

I looked up from my plate to see Oliver, his eyes closed, looking like one of those St. Sebastian paintings where he barely looks martyred at all and more like he has a kink for light bondage and heavy arrow penetration: the savory version of the Oliver-eating-dessert face. 

When he opened his eyes, he smiled gently and took my hand from across the table. I hadn’t noticed there’d been a fist clutching at my heart until now when the grip loosened and receded and my breaths came slower and looser. 

“It’s wonderful,” he said, and then had to withdraw his hand to take another forkful. 

“Thank god,” I said. “I spent all of yesterday covered in flour trying to make pasta properly.” 

“I can tell. I mean,” he added quickly, before I had time to react, “that your practice paid off. It’s all exceptional.” 

“Good.” 

“So which part is made of insects? Is the fettuccine made from cricket flour?” 

“Good guess. Actually, the flour had mites, so I thought, what the hell, I’ll just throw them in. And I think there was a spider living in the carrot greens.” 

Oliver’s eyes twinkled. “Thank god you intervened. I’ve been wasting away from lack of protein.” 

I adopted a thoughtful expression. “I thought it was B12.” These were the most common concerns that people expressed—including total strangers—upon learning that Oliver was vegetarian. Reveal a food restriction and suddenly everyone’s a nutritionist. Recently I’d even had the unpleasant experience of overhearing Oliver’s own mother express the same sentiments when she’d called him “just to chat,” meaning, of course, to enumerate all of the ways Oliver had failed her, personally, by being himself. 

Speaking of which. “How did yesterday go, anyway?” Whilst I’d been bumping my head on the ceiling of my flat and beating eggs and flour with a fork, Oliver had been visiting his parents. We’d discussed whether he should go at all, whether I should come with him, what he planned to say, even what he planned to wear. Ultimately, we decided he’d go alone. I’d reminded him several times that no matter what anyone said, it was acceptable for him to leave at any time, for any reason. 

“It was fine.” Seeing the look on my face, he sighed and went on, “Truly. My parents were rather distracted.” 

“We don’t have to talk about this right now,” I said, “but dare I ask what distracted them?” 

Oliver made this little wincing-grimace face that would have been adorable if it didn’t also fill me with the urge to build a blanket fort around my bed, drag him inside, and never let him out. “Mia and Christopher finally had time to Skype with them on Friday, and, well, the gist is, they’ve refused to come on the family holiday to Provence, and Mia is getting a tubal ligation.” 

“Wow. I… wow.” That would do it alright. “Uh. Send Mia my congratulations?” 

“That would be her preferred response, yes.” 

“We aren’t going to Provence either.” 

“That’s what we decided, yes.” 

“And I still think we shouldn’t” —honestly, if anything, the whole never-having-heterosexually-spawned grandchildren made me think it would be even less pleasant than I’d previously imagined— “but if you want to talk about it, we can.” 

“No,” he said firmly. “I don’t want to go.” 

It wasn’t long ago that that alone wouldn’t have been enough of a reason for Oliver to refuse to attend. Or even have been a factor in the decision. “I’ll toast to that.” 

The glitter in his eye was back, and after we’d clinked our glasses and had our mouthfuls of wine, his mouth quirked up in a small smile I might even go so far as to describe as _fond._

“I hope this isn’t a presumptuous or alarming question, but is there a particular occasion for this meal?’ He was still smiling, but I knew him, and I knew the little fold between his brows and the way he rocked his fork between his thumb and forefinger, and I knew a part of him was worried I’d spent all weekend cooking for him because he’d done something wrong. I couldn’t quite work out how one would follow the other, but worries don’t usually bother with sensibility. “Is this because you’ve already forgotten when my birthday is?” 

I’d been hoping to save it for dessert, but there was no putting it off now. “Remember last week when I came back to your place early from that party?” 

“Yes.” 

“It was one of Malcolm’s things, and the last time I went to one of his parties is when I ran into the Buzzfeed guy for the first time and then got papped—” 

“And then needed a suitable boyfriend,” he said, and if he meant to hide the wary and bewildered notes of his voice, he failed. 

“Not particularly related to where I’m going with this, but it _is_ nice to be reminded that no matter how shitty that night was, it started the domino effect that led to having you in my life.” 

Oliver actually blushed and turned his attention to his plate. 

I’d asked James Royce-Royce why I’d want the parmesan on the vegetables to be in big shreds rather than tiny grains. Grains struck me as somehow fancier. He said that this way you had to saw a bit at both the cheese and the squash to get a bite with both, and between that and twining the pasta onto your fork, you’d have reason to turn your attention to your plate and then to look up again while you chewed. It meant no one eating it could do so mindlessly, just scooping up food without looking at it and shoveling it into their mouth. And it could serve as an excuse to look somewhere other than your dining partner’s face. 

Avoiding looking at your dining partner’s face didn’t sound like a particularly romantic advantage to the meal, but I trusted him on it, and now I was glad I had because it turns out that when my dining partner looked down at his plate with a flush of pink on his cheeks—just because I’d said getting together with him was better than one of the shittiest nights of my adult life—I got to look at him without feeling self-conscious about staring. 

“Well, that night I was also super late and my friends had all already got there—even Bridget—and then there wasn’t reception inside and I couldn’t find them, and that was a big part of why it was all such shit. So this time I suggested that we all get dinner first, somewhere near the party, and then all go over together. So we did that, we met at this little Chinese place Tom knew about, and I was late but I got there way before Bridget did, and we had a really lovely time. _I_ had a really lovely time.” 

“I’m glad,” Oliver said, and I could tell that he was, even though he still didn’t know what any of this had to do with me making hand-made pasta. 

“Then we all went to the party and danced a bit, and that was good too. And it was such a big contrast with the last time I went to a party like that. It had been awhile since I’d actually enjoyed much of anything back then. So I was dancing, and thinking about that, and about being with you, and how much happiness that brings me too, and then I just… really, really missed you. I knew you were busy and working, but I wanted to sit next to you and watch She-Ra while you did it, way more than I wanted to be at that party.” I shrugged. “So I left. And I let myself in with the key you gave me, and you were there just like I pictured you, and I sat next to you and watched She-Ra, and it was better than anything.” 

“I enjoy occupying space with you, too, Lucien.” 

I could have stopped there. Made it sound like I’d had this minor epiphanic moment that made me appreciate him more than ever and want to show it through the medium of painstakingly-prepared vegetarian food. But Oliver made me brave. 

“So I was thinking,” I said, “since we both like that, what if we moved in together?” I’d never done this before. Never asked someone, someone I was dating, to move in with me. Miles and I hadn’t even talked about it, just started looking at flats together. And Oliver and I both knew that really I was asking if I could move in with _him,_ because his house was a much better prospect than the attic I lived in, so it wasn’t even like I was inviting him to come live with me. 

It took him a moment to reply. Which was fair, since clearly he hadn’t anticipated, well, any of this. When I’d told him to come to mine for dinner on Sunday he’d probably expected either takeaway, bubble and squeak, or the one quinoa dish I’ve learnt to make. But knowing that Oliver needed time to process and ruminate and do other Oliver things in his brain didn’t do much to help the terror beating a pulse in my chest. 

“I think,” he said at last, “that would be very agreeable.” 

I grinned and kicked him under the table. He kicked back, and we kicked and grinned and then turned back to our meals. 

When we finished, I brought out a big patterned teacup on a matching saucer, a gift from Judy and Mum that was probably a family heirloom Judy had found in the back of a cupboard and decided suited me. It was white with gold around the edges and a single, gold sprig of leaves and berries on the outside. I never drank out of it because it seemed too nice for just tea by myself. “Lemon posset with a garnish of fresh raspberries and mint leaves,” I announced, setting it on the table with a flourish.


	6. Dessert

####  _Lemon Posset recipe_

**Ingredients:**

2 big lemons 

500ml double cream 

160ml caster sugar 

**Directions:**

Grate the lemon skins as finely as you possibly can. This would definitely work better with a microplane, and you’ll have fewer cuts on your fingers. And then you won’t get lemon juice all over your cut-open skin, because _you wouldn’t have cuts on your fingers._

Juice the lemons. I don’t have even one of those hand juicer wotsits, so I settled for cutting the lemons into quarters and squeezing really hard over a glass measuring cup, then fiddling at the lemon insides with a fork to really work the juice out of there. 

Pour half the double cream and caster sugar into a large saucepan on low heat and slowly bring to a boil. Let it gently boil for 3 minutes, keeping an eye on it so it doesn’t spill over or burn. If it boils too fast, the cream will spoil and ruin everything. 

Remove the pan from the heat and let the whole thing cool to room temperature. 

Add the zest and lemon juice and whisk thoroughly. 

Strain the mixture through a fine mesh strainer into the containers it’ll be served in and refrigerate for at least 3 hours. 

Garnish with fresh raspberries and mint leaves.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to A for beta’ing, and for bringing me back into fandom in the first place. Thanks also to RS for doing the heavy lifting on planning and executing this imaginary meal. 
> 
> The fettuccine recipe is 98% just the recipe from Basics with Babish with a few parts rephrased ([link](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdSLKZ6LN94&ab_channel=BabishCulinaryUniverse)).
> 
> If you cut out all the narration, these recipes will work. I’m not from the UK (you can probably guess where I’m from) but I did my best to use only ingredients that would be available in a regular London supermarket and use metric measurements for the amounts. Apologies for any nonsensical quantities. The blame for those lies with me entirely, not RS.
> 
> [Tumblr post for the fic](https://dirigibleplumbing.tumblr.com/post/639701860524195840/aubergine-emoji-fandom-boyfriend-material). Also [my tumblr](https://dirigibleplumbing.tumblr.com/), where I mostly reblog about Marvel (particularly comics) and sometimes Hannibal or the Untamed.


End file.
